Educational Advancement: Predictive Maintenance and the High Performance School Building

For generations, school buildings have been operated and maintained using either a reactive or preventive maintenance approach. Facilities professionals have long asserted that preventive maintenance (versus a reactive “run-to-fail” approach) improves HVAC system performance and reliability while simultaneously reducing costs.

However, according to data from the Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP), a reliability-centered building maintenance strategy offers the greatest cost savings over a building’s decades-long occupied life. Reliability-centered maintenance combines reactive, preventive and predictive service approaches to avoid problems, eliminate root causes and maximize building performance.

Trane deploys reliability-centered models that enable building managers to designate mission-critical equipment, which in turn must be monitored closely using predictive-maintenance technologies and practices to prevent unscheduled downtime. Through their existing building automation systems (BAS), most schools are already equipped with the technology backbone needed to implement an effective predictive maintenance model. Trane’s Tracer Operator Suite, provides schools and their service partners with a broad range of actionable information that can be accessed from any internet-connected computer.

Trane intelligent service platforms represent the culmination of the reliability-centered service model, providing schools with a wide range of operational and financial benefits. These smart platforms deliver building operators the real-time information necessary to make data-based decisions for optimal building performance, energy efficiency and reliability.

In an intelligent building application, sensors and smart controllers built into HVAC equipment connect to sophisticated BASs through which mission-critical systems are monitored 24/7 by a third-party services provider. Trane is the best choice for a provider because it offers expertise, resources and experience in delivering effective service solutions. Moreover, Trane delivers the superior operating, maintenance and service strategy essential to reduce energy consumption, manage lifecycle operating costs and boost the performance of both new and existing school buildings.